115The facade casts its > space shadow onto the area ly-
ing directly in front of it. It functions as a direct backdrop
or stage rear wall for the enactment of everyday urban life.
The facade itself is a stage for making entrances, i.e. at win-
dows and doors, on roof terraces or balconies. Formed as a
space-containing wall in a ‘multilayered’ (Hofer 1979)
urban space, it belongs simultaneously to a building’s interior
and exterior, and makes possible spatialized interactions be-
tween > inside and outside. Examples of constructive artifices
are projecting structures such as > arcades, > galleries, bal-
conies, trellises and wall > layering. By containing space and
through > pochés in the facade, the discrepancy between the
contours of the outer and inner spaces can be balanced, and
each zone guaranteed its spatial identity.
If it is to work together with neighbouring facades and
function effectively from both proximate and distant view-
points within the larger urban landscape > context, the fa-
cade design must be attentive to the most diverse orders and
scales. The spaces of the city, its streets and public squares,
are contoured and formed by the > surfaces of multiple fa-
cades set into relation to one another. Independently of the
buildings lying behind, the space of the street is legible as a
continuous space that is lined with ennobled surfaces. The
facade may even acquire a certain degree of autonomy as a
three-dimensional form, so that it becomes almost independ-
ent of the building behind, as in the curved church facades of
the late Baroque era.
The richness of spatial references and forms of spatial
experience that are objectified in the elements of the facade
call for the multidimensional communication of contrasts:
of planar composition and shallow space, projection and re-
cession, confrontation and permeability. The architecture of
the facade particularly fulfils the function of conveying so-
cial messages via a dialogue between the private space of the
building and the public space of the city.
Literature: Kemp 2009; Neumeyer 1995; Stephan 2009